A special team

Surya and ElumalaiIt is not often that you see a man and a woman employee working together as a team in an Auroville forest or garden. But Elumalai and his wife, Surya, are different. Both of them were born and brought up in Mathur, a sleepy village to the north of Auroville. Neither of them had any schooling. At the age of seven, Elumalai’s father sent him out to take care of goats, and he did this for seven years. When the goats died from an illness, he began work as a mason helper at Pondicherry University. However, he didn’t like working with cement, so two years later he became a forest worker in Samriddhi, an Auroville greenbelt community. Here he discovered what he really loved doing, and for the past thirty years he has worked in the forests and gardens of Auroville. Surya’s family are land workers and she began working on the land when quite young. Eighteen years ago, she married Elumalai. Within a few years they had a daughter and a son. When the children were old enou...
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